


Chronic Hedonic

by FriendshipCastle



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is a hongry boi, Crowley is indulgent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 03:17:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19287025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendshipCastle/pseuds/FriendshipCastle
Summary: Aziraphale loves a good meal. He prefers to have a meal with company. How can he subtly get Crowley to hang out with him? Orchestrating mild dangerous situations to make Crowley feel bad for him? Yes, excellent plan.





	Chronic Hedonic

**Author's Note:**

> Hiccup helped with the ideas for this! I've missed brainstorming fics with friends, I love her so much.

Aziraphale was daydreaming. He could night-dream if he went to sleep, but he hadn’t slept much since 1780 and had fallen a bit out of practice. Reminiscing was all right, though. Relaxed his mind, refreshed his appreciation of the world, and made him feel satisfied about his actions during his time on earth. And if his reminiscing happened while he was very carefully cleaning the gutters along Lambeth Street at 2 o’clock in the morning, it was technically ‘in the morning’ and therefore could be considered daydreaming.

Aziraphale felt a bit guilty, because he was daydreaming about food, which could fall under the sin of Gluttony, but just _thinking_ about a nice meal didn’t mean he was going out and gobbling one up. Food was nice. Thinking about food was almost as nice as actually eating it. It was like savoring but with just his memories, and surely that couldn’t count as a sin? Because this stretch of gutter had contained some particularly nasty refuse, Aziraphale had decided to run through his favorite meals in alphabetical order, keeping his mind busy. He decided on æbleskiver for ‘a’ and 비빔밥 for ‘b,’ and the obvious choice for ‘c’ was crêpes. ‘C’ and crêpes also made him think of Crowley. 

It had been a little while since he’d seen the demon around. Crowley had been kind (in his own prickly, demonic way) the last time they’d run into each other during the Terror. Aziraphale had been gloomily worrying about discorporation by guillotine when Crowley swept into that dreadful little cell and rescued him. He’d been fairly blasé about the whole thing, but it had touched Aziraphale deeply to know that the demon kept up with him and would step in to do a good turn. Perhaps Crowley would only do a good turn for someone if it did a _bad_ turn for someone else, but it was at least a small step in the direction of light and goodness.

Aziraphale leaned into a particularly nasty, sticky lump of garbage that was glued to the cobbles, working to pry it loose. He had reached his miracle quota a bit sooner than he would have liked this month, and now any good deeds had to be carefully considered for their miracle-worthiness (or he could risk Heaven noticing him dicking around with magic and risk a strongly-worded notice). Cleaning up a street was all right to do by hand. He wouldn’t be doing it by hand again, but it was a learning experience. Aziraphale really needed to work on rationing his miracles; if Crowley hadn’t shown up in France then Heaven only knew what he would have done! 

He and Crowley had gone out for crêpes after escaping that cell. Such magnificent crêpes, too—thin without being greasy, sweet without being glutinous, and such a delightful texture on the tongue! Aziraphale sighed happily, and then regretted it when he inhaled and realized he was breathing muck-smell.

“Gracious!” The angel pressed a handkerchief over his nose. Doing a little, unnoticeable good deed in the small hours of the morning was its own reward, but it wasn’t a very comforting thought right now. A nice meal would do better to improve his mood. He could start planning one right now, sorting out the courses he could order and the wine pairings. Reminiscing was all well and good, but anticipating was equally beneficial.

A meal was so much more enjoyable with company, though. 

Aziraphale tucked his handkerchief away and looked up and down the street, inspecting his work. It wasn’t much, but it was a nicer view. The smell was also less pungent, but Aziraphale’s eyebrows stayed twisted up in concern. He wasn’t sure how to ask Crowley if they could enjoy a lunch together. It was sure to happen again someday—they seemed to run into each other a fair amount, as they had been on earth for over 5,000 years—but ‘someday’ was too nebulous. Aziraphale had his quiet, saintly miracle work to occupy his time, but it got a bit lonely after a while. He was the only angel who had stayed on Earth this long. Crowley, too, was the only demon who had lingered after that business with the Garden of Eden. Sheer probability said they’d run into each other a fair amount, and they had. How to make it happen again, though? Without directly asking, of course—it didn’t do to let the opposition know you wanted to hang out with them on a regular basis.

Aziraphale tried to think on how they had met up in the past. The business with the Son of God had been a bit grim. The encounter in the Roman pub later on had been unanticipated, as had running into each other as knights. Then there was the Terror, of course…

The Terror is where Crowley had been shockingly kind. He’d taken Aziraphale exactly where he wanted to go for a meal, as if he were trying to cheer Aziraphale up. It had worked, the cheering-up. Food often cheered Aziraphale up. Crowley hadn’t really eaten anything, but he’d stuck around to talk about this and that, and had insisted Aziraphale buy him a drink or two or five. Not a very notable evening, but it had been pleasant. 

Crowley had arrived in the nick of time to stop Aziraphale’s beheading; maybe a similar dangerous situation would draw the demon out again and persuade him to indulge in a nice lunch in a good part of town. There were a couple restaurants that Aziraphale wanted an excuse to try. Putting himself in a bit of danger to see if Crowley would feel sorry for him and buy him a meal was a small price to pay if it meant he got to try the new almond cake at the bakery a couple of streets down from his bookstore.

Aziraphale nodded with determination. Some light danger and then he and Crowley could enjoy a meal together! What could go wrong?

 

 

***

 

 

Orchestrating light danger wasn’t difficult. Aziraphale knew the parts of London that had a poor reputation. He had explored a few of them to do some gentle kindnesses, including teaching the girls around Whitechapel about Egyptian kohl 'smokey eye’ techniques (and clearing up a few cases of the clap, when he could get away with a shoulder-pat to lay on hands). A few beggars around that area had warm coats (albeit 15 years out of fashion) and no longer had the DT skewing their perspective on the world, too. Small kindnesses were sometimes all it took to set a person back on the path of love and righteousness.

Wandering London’s seedy back alleys looking for trouble meant that it found him after about twenty minutes of jingling some pocket change, humming and looking drunk.

“Oi,” someone said. “Fuckin’ flash bastard here thinks he can—”

Aziraphale turned around, smiling brightly. “Hm? What? Hello?”

He got punched in the face. It hurt, but in a distant way. Aziraphale was lying down. This was unexpected. The ground was hard. He’d fallen here. After the punch to the face. The cobbles were hard. There was a stick in his back. A dull burn started in his ribs. He’d been kicked. He was being kicked. The world was rather slow. This seemed frightfully unfair. It was, however, kind of the point of putting himself in danger.

“Ow,” Aziraphale said. He blinked away a concussion, tasted his split lip, and breathed away the cracks in his ribs. He sat up. No one kicked him again.

There was one solitary, dark shape among shadows, but when he turned to Aziraphale, the angel could see his thin, pale face and the dark glasses he’d just pushed back up his nose.

“Oh! Hello, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, pleased this had all worked out. “How lovely to see you.”

“What the hell are you doing here, angel?” Crowley snapped.

Aziraphale stood, brushing himself off and only staggering a little. “Just a little late-night wander, seeing that these nice ladies and gents are having a decent time. Well, not _these_ gents, obviously—they were rather unkind. Took my watch, it seems. That’s a shame, I got that from Mr. Harrison and it kept such good time.”

“You check on the whores?” Crowley said.

“Please: gentlefolk of the evening. And of course, my dear! Who else will?”

Crowley took a few steps back and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Well. That’s a fair point, I s’pose. Even after all that business with the Son of You Know being accepting of it all, folks still get shirty about the sex trade.”

“Bit silly, if you ask me,” Aziraphale said. He shook his head to get rid of the edges of a headache and refocused on his original mission. “You saved me, though, yes?”

Crowley’s posture got somehow more slumped and yet also smug. “I was just passing by and, yeah, I saw some lads going after you. Thought I’d see if you needed a hand.”

“Yes, you were exceptionally helpful. Would you like to do lunch?”

Crowley’s posture becomes awkward with confused angles. “What? Um. Well, uh. It’s a bit past midnight right now, Aziraphale, I don’t know if you noticed…”

“Oh! Silly me, you’re right.” This should have been something Aziraphale prepared for, frankly. He hadn’t thought about the time. 

Crowley was smirking. “You know what, I actually thought of a place. They’re open late—so late it’s early, I suppose—and they’re not far.”

“Really? That’s marvelous! What kind of fare do they have?”

Crowley set off at a deceptively fast saunter. “Oh, I think it should be a surprise, angel.”

“Not even a hint? Well, I can tell you I’m more in the mood for savory than sweet, and I’ve been trying to avoid soups these days after I saw a rat—a rat!—floating in some stew at the kitchen down the street from my bookshop. Disgusting business.”

Crowley hummed in vague sympathy. His cap sat far back on his head, a rather shapeless thing that would fit in with the lower-class neighborhood. Aziraphale squinted at it, still chattering about the local news, and swapped his own top hat for a similar cap. He couldn’t bear to miracle over his nice, clean coat, though, so he pulled up a dark-grey cape over his outfit, trying to blend with the gloom of London at night the way Crowley did. He’d learned his lesson about dressing to fit in after France.

“...imagine what she said to that,” Aziraphale finished with his story. He nodded once in satisfaction. 

Crowley gripped his arm. “We’re here.”

Aziraphale looked around with curiosity, and then his expression collapsed into befuddlement. “What is this?”

“Pasty cart,” Crowley said. He was grinning again. “Go on, pick one. I recommend the mutton, myself, but you get what you want. My treat.”

The cold-eyed man behind the cart was simply staring at them, his slab-like arms crossed. A truncheon hung from a hook at the side of the blank cart. There was no sign indicating what he sold, just the smell of pastry, grease, and meat.

“This is open late,” Aziraphale murmured.

“Yep.” Crowley popped the ‘p’.

“I, I, I had been rather hoping for some… lighter fare.”

“This is what we’ve got. Some comfort for you, post-mugging. A poor trade for a lovely little watch, I’d say, but needs must, eh?”

Aziraphale couldn’t help but pout. 

Crowley’s brittle, cheery tones faded into something a bit less sarcastic as he said, “Listen, angel, it’s my treat. You want me to order for you? Oi, mate, can we get a mutton or a chicken?”

“ ‘s beef today,” the man said. He sounded as though he’d eaten a bag of gravel.

“Sure,” Crowley said. “One of those, then.” He passed over a couple small coins and got a steaming package in glistening brown paper, which he pressed into Aziarphale’s disinterested hand. “Here. Enjoy.”

Aziraphale gave the pasty a doubtful look. Heaving a heavy sigh, he unwrapped a corner and took a bite. It took some time to chew, but his eyebrows gradually uncrinkled and the sparkling interest returned to his eyes. “My goodness!”

Crowley was grinning a crooked grin. “Told you. The mutton’s even better, in my opinion.”

“This is fascinating! The flavors are quite bold. I don’t think a wine would pair well with this…”

“Beer’s more traditional,” Crowley offered.

“Ooh, splendid! I can imagine… My word. Do you want a bite?”

“Me? Nah. I ate for the week.”

Aziraphale recalled Crowley’s snake-like metabolism for everything except alcohol. “Ah, yes, of course. My word. A pasty, you said?”

“Yep. Good, strong, English fare.”

“I can’t believe I’ve never had one!”

“You haven’t done a lot of late-night pub crawls, have you?”

“Why would I?” 

The cold-eyed pasty seller watched them leave, face stony as their conversation faded. He reached into the pocket of his stained apron and pulled out the coins he’d been given. The shape was a bit rough and, after a moment, he realized that the monarch on the silver was facing the wrong direction. He squinted at the coin, trying to read the inscription around the outside, and caught the initials ‘FR.’ His head whipped up and he glared after the pair of toffs-in-very-bad-disguise who had been swallowed up by the shadows. “Fuckin’ Frenchies,” he growled.

 

 

***

 

 

Crowley came to expect it every few years or so. Beyond their occasional meetups to discuss the Arrangement and hash out who should perform the balanced miracle and temptation in a specific area (Crowley played to cheat the coin tosses—he had no desire to tramp around the Isle of Man in the sleet if he could trick the angel into doing it), Aziraphale would regularly get himself into a pickle. 

Muggings were common for a few years, but after an unexpected attack dog incident left them both shaken, Aziraphale agreed to stop wandering the shadier districts of London with a full purse. Crowley bought him a final pasty to celebrate the end of a dangerous era. The scenarios changed. Instead, he would get lost.

Because Aziraphale always proposed getting a meal after a harrowing misadventure, and because Crowley was an asshole, Crowley decided that Aziraphale getting lost on the way to Cornwall and winding up in Wales when he knew Crowley would be there was worth cawl and cheese, though Aziraphale complained that he’d wanted bara brith. 

When Aziraphale turned up in Leeds with artfully smudged clothes and a hangdog expression, once again saying, “I got all turned around!” Crowley slid his sunglasses down his nose and gave Aziraphale a long, disbelieving look. He did take him out for another soup and cheese, though.

It was a bit more serious in the 20th century when Aziraphale sent a summons. As Crowley sauntered up to their meeting place in the park, the angel turned with a stricken expression to say, “The _gavotte_ is dead!” That warranted a few kindly shoulder-pats and a sit-down meal at a tasteful Italian place, accompanied by a worrying amount of wine and wailing.

Aziraphale had an uninspired ‘disaster’ in the 1950s when he insisted that he’d lost a good, solid coat. Crowley decided that mishap was worth a take-out curry eaten while leaning up against Crowley’s beloved Bentley, because Aziraphale completely failed to make the case believable. He provided a few photographs of himself wearing the coat, and then did not wear it again, but Crowley considered that to be circumstantial at best.

In 1975, Aziraphale mentioned that his bookshop had been threatened. Crowley considered whether this had been a complaint or a brag, as the angel then smugly added that he’d dealt with the ‘bullies’ quite handily by modifying their memories and sending them out to Bristol with entirely new identities. 

“That sounds a bit wicked, actually, angel,” Crowley had said.

“Nonsense! They’ll be so much happier this way. And they won’t go around threatening harmless little bookshop-keepers.” 

Crowley didn’t want to encourage Aziraphale in invading his line of work, but it had been framed as a threat to Aziraphale’s person. Crowley quite enjoyed Aziraphale’s person, and had for millennia (not that he’d admit it aloud). As a compromise, Crowley did take him to try the new American place that had opened in Woolwich last year. They both agreed the decor was tasteless, though the thin chips were hard to stop eating. 

 

 

***

 

 

They were quiet on the bus. For once, Crowley didn’t take the seat behind Aziraphale; he sat beside him, a demon in the aisle and an angel in the window seat. Crowley slumped but kept his knees to himself. Aziraphale folded his hands neatly in his lap. They didn’t talk much, but at one point, Crowley said, “Who was that delivery person?”

“Pardon?”

“Why’d you give him your sword?”

Aziraphale blinked away from the dark view outside the bus window and turned to him, looking charmingly befuddled. “I, I don’t know. I suppose because he thought to ask for it in such specific terms. It was clearly part of his job.”

“Mm. Makes you wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“How many regular-looking people with regular-looking lives shave up against that effing ineffable plan you keep citing as gospel.”

Aziraphale tucked a smile in the corner of his mouth. “Well, you know it _is_ a part of Gospel.”

Crowley waved an irritated hand. “I set that up, all right, my bad. I mean, though, did he even know what he was doing?”

Aziraphale sighed and shrugged and turned back to his window.

“Lazy communication,” Crowley said. “Calling it ineffable, sending regular people in stupid uniforms to do your sneaky dirty work, not telling ‘em if they got it right or not...”

“Hush,” Aziraphale said softly. “It’s done. For now.”

“I should bloody hope so,” Crowley grumbled under his breath. Aziraphale elbowed him. Both were surprised at how sharp and bony the other one was. The shocked look they exchanged lingered for a moment.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale said, eyes wide. “I don’t know what came over me, I— Are you all right?”

“You almost shot a kid tonight and you’re asking if you hurt me with an elbow?” Crowley said.

Aziraphale’s lips compressed tightly and the tips of his ears turned an enraged, embarrassed pink. He turned to the window again.

The bus rumbled down another hedgerow. The other passengers—and there weren’t many—were starting to realize that they were not going to be going to Oxford after all. There were some mutterings. Crowley beamed a sunglasses-covered glare around the vehicle and the muttering stopped immediately.

“I was quite impressed,” Crowley told Aziraphale.

“Well, you shouldn’t be,” Aziraphale said. His voice sounded like he was wringing it out of a dishrag, wet and miserable and with a lot of tension behind it. “I did, you’re right, I almost killed a child, and he was quite nice.”

“Eh, not that nice. Human, after all.” Crowley saw that his words were not helpful at all. A squirm of shame started in his stomach, and for once he didn’t dismiss it with the reasoning of, _Well, I’m a demon, so shame doesn’t apply to me._ Instead, he said, “We thought it was the only way, angel.”

“It wasn’t, though! Madam Tracy made us find a different way, and don’t you _dare_ try to be a bad influence on me right now; I know you better than that. It was a stupid idea to try and kill Adam with a gun that looked like a sousaphone. I don’t like thinking about it, or else I start feeling sick.”

Crowley considered this for a while. All his words seemed inadequate. All the gestures he could make seemed equally inadequate, except for one. “Hey, Aziraphale.”

“What, Crowley?”

“You’ve had a bad day.”

“Everyone on the planet’s had a bad day,” Aziraphale said miserably. “They don’t realize how bad it almost was, but everyone—”

“I think you deserve a meal. My treat.”

Aziraphale let out a breathy wheeze as his words died in his throat. “O-oh? Why are you thinking about food at a time like this? I thought you ate for the week?”

Crowley leaned over to the angel and let his glasses slide down his nose a bit. “I know about your little trick to get a free lunch.”

Aziraphale audibly gulped.

Crowley pushed his glasses back into place and leaned back. “This particular disaster, though, you deserve something special. Something better than Nando’s, or a curry up against… Well, I guess we can’t eat a curry up against my Bentley anymore, eh?” He fell silent, blinking at the sudden burn in his sinuses. He had never cried before, but the urge to give in to a little sniffle was present.

Aziraphale put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder, gave it a few pats, and then just… left it there. It was quite warm. Crowley, who still dealt with a lot of cold-blooded tendencies, decided it was probably helping his circulation, and that was why his heart had sped up.

The rest of the bus ride was silent. When the angel and demon got off in front of Crowley’s apartment building, though, the rest of the passengers blinked out of a hazy daze. There was a certain amount of outraged yelling and confused apologizing between passengers and driver as the bus turned around and headed back towards its original destination: Oxford, by way of Tadfield and then, quite by accident, London.

 

 

***

 

 

“This one’s me,” Crowley said when the elevator doors dinged. He shuffled through the looming cement monolith walls and stark art displays, shedding his jacket and glasses and shoes as he went. 

Aziraphale kept his eyes turned politely away from the lewd wrestling statue in the foyer. “How… modern.”

“Yeah, well.” Crowley disappeared around the corner, into what proved to be a kitchen. He looked moodily at his slim, sleek, burnished oven. The little window roared a tomato-y orange with sudden heat. Then the demon turned and gave a more direct glare to his slim, sleek, burnished breadbox. When he reached in, he brought out a loaf of bread larger than his head and a pale, papery object in his other hand.

“What are you doing?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley turned his yellow eyes to the angel and said, “Cooking.”

“I didn’t know you… My dear boy, I had no idea! You _cook_?”

Because of his serpentine origins, Crowley didn’t have to blink, and didn’t. “Just for special occasions.”

It was hard to know where to put his gaze. Aziraphale said, “Well, averting Armageddon is quite… special. I’m really quite excited to see—”

“I can only do garlic bread,” Crowley said.

“What?”

Crowley waved the papery object, which was indeed a bulb of garlic. “It’s all I’ve figured out so far. Tasty toast, you know? Butter, garlic, bread. Useful stuff.”

“Oh! That sounds delightful, actually. Um.”

“Wine’s over there.” Crowley pointed at a slim, sleek, burnished cabinet tucked in a corner. “Pour us a glass, would you, angel?”

Aziraphale inspected vintages. The two of them had passed a progressively improved chardonnay back and forth while sitting on the bench waiting for the rerouted Oxford bus, but he was feeling the strain of the day and the weight of upcoming consequences. It was, perhaps, time to switch to a red.

“Ata Rangi, two-thousand and seven?”

“Perfect,” Crowley said. He’d stuck a paring knife into the garlic and pried a gleaming clove out of all that papery skin wrapper with a neat twist. 

Aziraphale tugged at the confusingly futuristic cabinets—they opened up like garage doors!—until he found Crowley’s wine glasses. The pair he pulled out rang together, the sound echoing around the narrow but lofty kitchen. “Sorry!” 

The wine glugged. Crowley chopped, then mashed, then spread butter and garlic on slices of the thick bread. He lay the bread on foil and slid it in the oven. Then he walked over to Aziraphale, ignored the glass that was offered to him by a suddenly shaky, well-manicured hand, and started chugging directly from the bottle.

“Oh, I say,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley kept chugging. His chin tilted back and back, adam’s apple working steadily. Aziraphale looked away and took a prim sip from his glass.

Crowley gasped once as he set the empty bottle down. “Right. Gonna need to open another one of those.”

“Crowley, you’ve got a little…” Aziraphale dug in his pocket for a handkerchief and mimed wiping the corners of his mouth. “Honestly, it’s good you only wear black, or else you’d stain your every—”

“Shut up, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale slowly stuffed the hanky back in his pocket. He sipped his wine again. Crowley fumbled through his own wine collection, muttering regions and dates under his breath. It was a collection random enough to make a sommelier weep with frustration. He eventually emerged with another pinot noir, this one significantly dustier. He waved it at Aziraphale, eyebrows raised in a silent question.

“I am fine for now, thank you.” The tone was icy.

“Ah, don’t be like that! Top off?” 

Aziraphale’s nose wrinkled, which made Crowley smile in a way that made his eyes go soft. He lowered the bottle he was holding until it dangled from his fist. 

“Angel, you are adorable.”

Aziraphale turned pink with amazement. “Why, Crowley, I—! Um. Well. Thank you?”

“You’ve been adorable since the Beginning, though.” The corners of Crowley’s eyes crinkled in a genuine smile. For a moment, they looked at each other the way they had at the fall of Eden, amazed all over again at the ability of an angel or a demon to still be surprising in the most delightful of ways.

Aziraphale carefully set his glass down on Crowley’s sleek, slim, black marble countertop. He cleared his throat. “You know, Crowley, we’ve just had a very unexpected day, despite all the planning and prophesying.”

“Only gets you so far,” Crowley said, still beaming in a sappy, fond way that he’d have been embarrassed about if he was paying attention to his face.

“Well, yes. But I’m thinking of the last prophecy, the one concerning you and me.”

“Mm?”

“I’m thinking that we are… Well, we’re still an angel and a demon, of course, and always will be—”

Crowley’s smile sharpened, hardened. “Damn right.”

Aziraphale reached out a hand, almost without thinking about it, and touched Crowley’s cheek. He smoothed a thumb over the corner of the demon’s mouth tenderly, as if trying to reshape that smile back into something kind. Crowley stared at him, jaw slack with astonishment.

The angel gave him a sad little smile. “Our offices are going to be fucking furious, my dear.”

Crowley’s breath hitched in a bark of laughter.

“Perhaps we should ensure they think we’re a little closer to human than we truly are, though.” Aziraphale’s thumb was still making slow, soothing motions against Crowley’s bottom lip. “We could be something entirely new, I think.”

Against Aziraphale’s fingertips, Crowley’s mouth moved into a smile of wonder again. “You know, you’re a bit of an evil genius, Aziraphale.” There was a pause, filled only with the smell of faintly burning garlic. Crowley added, in a rush, “You know I love it.”

“It?”

“You.”

“Oh? Yes.”

“I’ll get the, uh.” Crowley turned blindly to his oven, sliding the _very_ browned garlic bread out without remembering that the foil should be too hot to handle without oven mitts. His hands didn’t burn, though; he was a demon, and if the fires of Hell couldn’t fry him, aluminium and toast couldn’t, either. He plopped the garlic bread on the counter and shut the oven off by forgetting it completely. Crowley’s chest felt weird and full of air, light and achy at the same time. 

Aziraphale had picked up his wine and was swirling it gently, smiling at him over the rim of the glass. “It smells lovely.”

Crowley’s tongue darted out and licked at the corner of his mouth, where Aziraphale’s touch had been. “You hungry?”

“No, not really.”

“You, ah, want to make a, a plan?”

“Not right now.”

“More wine?”

The angel was glaring and smiling at the same time. “No, Crowley. _Thank_ you."

In a slightly breathier register, Crowley offered, “Wanna snog?"

“Yes, please.”

And they did, with a certain amount of slamming Crowley up against his sleek, slim, _sharp_ appliances. 

The garlic bread cooled. The night wore on. The Earth spun, un-annihilated and doing quite well, considering the danger it had been in a few hours before. There would be plans to make, bosses to fool, dinners to eat (at the Ritz or leaned up against Crowley’s Bentley), hands to hold, time to explore. It all felt entirely new, even after 6,000 years.

**Author's Note:**

> Heyoh I've loved this book for so long but truly, I needed to watch the show and yell about it for 3 hours with Hic to write this! As always, my notes are nothing. My notes are citations for how nerdy I am.
> 
> The Korean? Bibimbap.
> 
> I did some fun searching for old London maps to find Lambeth Street (I referenced this one: http://www.romanticlondon.org/explore-horwoods-plan/#17/51.51281/-0.06910), but I already knew about Whitechapel—it was the site of Jack the Ripper killings. This is pre-killings, though.
> 
> Aziraphale mentions a Mr. Harrison making him a watch. John Harrison, a clockmaker, discovered a method for determining longitude using a very accurate clock in the 1770s. I also already knew this.
> 
> When Crowley pays for the pasty, he's paying with 1784 French écu, which depicts Louis XVI, instead of the expected tuppence, which was also silver at the time. I didn't know any of this, I am just a huge details dork.
> 
> Cawl is a Welsh stew. Bara brith is a Welsh tea cake. They did make it on an episode of Great British Bake Off, that's the only reason I know about it.
> 
> When they go to "the new American place that had opened in Woolwich," it's McDonald's. The first McDonald's in London.
> 
> According to Tumblr, there's an art book of Good Omens concept stuff and there's shots of Crowley's apartment and he owns a couple of statues of naked male angels wrestling. Can't see Aziraphale approving.
> 
> Ata Rangi 2007 is a New Zealand pinot noir that's like. $65 a bottle as of the time of publishing this fic. I won't pay double-digits for wine and I definitely won't drink a red so this is wild to me.
> 
> I saw a video on the technique Crowley uses to peel garlic and I want to try it, it looks much less fiddly than the slow peeling tactic I've been doing. Hic just buys the little bottles of pre-chopped garlic because she's smarter than me.


End file.
